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In the late 1600s, bandeirantes (settlers in colonial Brazil) discovered large deposits of gold and diamonds in present-day Minas Gerais (General Mines). The Portuguese colony would soon experience the longest gold rush in history and produce the largest gold mines in the world. Nearly a million people (including 500,000 enslaved Africans) would arrive in the region to mine.
One of the communities that flourished in that era was Catas Altas do Mato Dentro. In 1729, to accommodate the growing population, construction began on the Igreja Matriz de Nossa Senhora da Conceição (Mother Church of Our Lady of Conception). In line with other Brazilian baroque Catholic churches, this example features towering and intricately carved wooden columns, gilded altarpieces and motifs, and an array of sculptures and paintings.
“The carvings and decorative surfaces on the sculptures are of the highest quality,” says Stéphanie Auffret, a conservator with expertise in wooden gilded surfaces and senior project specialist at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). “These elements are reminiscent of the interiors of earlier churches in Europe, especially in Portugal.”
Unlike Portuguese churches, though, the Mother Church of Our Lady of Conception is part of a unique fusion of Portuguese, Indigenous, and African heritage. For instance, the Afro-Brazilian cultural practice known as Congado combines elements of Roman Catholic and African traditions through music, dance, and costume. And the interior of the church contains decorations finished with materials found in the surrounding forests.
One other detail sets the church apart. The ornate carvings that adorn its walls were worked on until the 1800s—when all construction abruptly stopped: the mining boom had come to an end, the church lost much of its parishioner base, and although listed as a historic site in the early 20th century by state and national organizations, it was abandoned.
In the early 1990s, Luiz Souza, now head of the Conservation Science Laboratory at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), visited the church for his PhD thesis in chemistry. What he found was a time capsule. Sections of untouched, exposed wooden altars and sculptures remained inside the church, which was never finished, much less restored. Its interior had also been overrun by bats, birds, spiders, and “other regular inhabitants you find in dark and unventilated spaces,” he recalls.
Efforts to clean and restore the church have since brought it back to life, but much more remains to be done, especially in the broader region where many churches face similar challenges.
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